Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Could Terrell Stoglin become Maryland’s all-tme leading scorer?

A thought occurred to me while watching Maryland almost blow another lead on the road last night at Clemson. Could Terrell Stoglin actually end up as Maryland’s all-time leading scorer?

Now, a lot of things could happen that could impact this over the next couple of years. Injuries could always play a factor, Stoglin could leave early (which is doubtful in my opinion), the team around him could improve, resulting in less of a reliance on Stoglin’s scoring, and he could just regress in his last two years in College Park.

Those potential obstacles aside, Terrell Stoglin is on the fast track to reaching the top of the scoring list.

After the game versus Clemson, Stoglin as a total of 881 points in a little less than two years. That doesn’t even put him in the top 50 all-time. But let’s take a closer look at the numbers

2010- 2011: Averaged 11.4 points per game for a total of 376 points.

2011-2012: Currently averaging 22 points per game for a total of 505 points this season.

Maryland has 7 regular season games left this year. Let’s assume that they just go one-and-done in the ACC tournament and do not make any postseason tournaments. So they would have 8 more games this season. If you give a conservative guess on his points per game the rest of the year (say 20 ppg), that’s an additional 160 points for the rest of this season, leaving Stoglin with 1,041 total points through the first half of his Maryland career, and 1,228 short of Juan Dixon’s all-time mark.

Assuming the Terps play 30 regular season games per year, plus a couple of postseason games in either the ACC tournament and NCAA or NIT tournaments over the next couple of years, that’s approximately 33 or 34 games per season. At that amount, Stoglin would only need to average a little over 18 ppg over his remaining two years to pass Dixon.

As mentioned before, there are many factors that could prevent this from happening. The most logical of those potential scenarios is the team improving as a whole. If this team continues to get better, and with the recruiting class coming in next year it is bound to happen, they may not need to rely on Stoglin’s scoring as much. And maybe Mark Turgeon won’t be as reluctant to sit him on the bench when he launches up a terrible shot.

Either way, Stoglin is on pace to become one of the most prolific scorers in Maryland basketball history. Winning ultimately determines the extent of a player’s greatness, and reaching and doing some damage in the NCAA tournament as an upper classman will go a long way to determining Stoglin's legacy. That’s why players such as Len Bias and Juan Dixon are reveled. Let’s just hope Stoglin can make it to that level as well.